Skin - Chapter 22

He opened the door and got in: “Did you pay the bill in advance? Didn’t you agree that I would treat you to this meal?”

　　Lu Shichen said “hmm” without saying anything else, and reminded him: “Seat belt.”

　　”Mr. Lu,” Meng Zhao pulled on his seat belt and looked at him, “do you think we police officers live in poverty? Okay, compared to high-end talents like you, we do live in poverty. But, I can still afford to treat you to a meal…”

　　”The restaurant you chose happens to be within the contract signing range of the company I work for. Please try again next time.” Lu Shichen said calmly.

　　”Okay,” Meng Zhao leaned back in his seat. He had finally chosen a restaurant, but he still couldn’t treat him to the meal. “Alright. Send me your company’s contract signing range in advance next time.”

　　Lu Shichen drove Meng Zhao to the city bureau.

　　After getting out of the car, Meng Zhao walked around to the back of the car and was about to open the trunk. Suddenly he noticed someone looking at him. When he turned his head, he realised that it was Lu Yang, the owner of the public account where the article was released.

　　Lu Yang walked towards him, looking a little afraid of him: “Officer Meng.”

　　Meng Zhao had a bad impression of Lu Yang because of the fact that his article had forced Zhao Yunhua to commit suicide. He glanced at Lu Yang and asked a little coldly: “Why are you here? Do you have something to do with me?”

　　”I…I came here to apologise,” Lu Yang stammered, “I didn’t mean it that day. I didn’t expect that the article would be read by Zhao Yunhua. At that time, I thought that as long as the article was published, my account could become popular, after all, my family does not support me in my work…”

　　”So you just wanted to prove yourself through that article, right?”

Meng Zhao opened the trunk, but he was in no hurry to retrieve the computer. He turned to look at Lu Yang and said, “The popularity of that article is not low. Your goal has been achieved, so why are you still looking for me?”

　　Watching Lu Yang lowering his head and remaining silent for a long time, Meng Zhao didn’t want to waste time with him anymore. Just as he was about to turn around to get the computer, Lu Yang suddenly reached out and grabbed him, and raised his voice in a hurry: “I didn’t expect that the article would force Zhao Yunhua to commit suicide. If I had known, I wouldn’t have posted it. I haven’t even slept properly in the past few days. Whenever I try to close my eyes, I see Zhao Yunhua staring at me…”

　　Meng Zhao was a little irritated by him and interrupted him: “Then what do you want to do? Are you here at the city bureau to look for someone to dance for you to drive away evil spirits?”

　　At the same time, Lu Shichen pushed open the car door and walked over. He first glanced at Lu Yang’s hand on Meng Zhao’s arm, and then moved his eyes to Lu Yang’s face: “What’s the matter?”

　　Because Lu Shichen was with Meng Zhao the last time they had met, Lu Yang had apparently mistook Lu Shichen for a policeman. He loosened his grip on Meng Zhao’s arm and turned to hold Lu Shichen’s: “It wasn’t intentional, if I had known then…”

　　”Don’t talk about the past anymore,” Lu Shichen interrupted, “Is there anything else you want to say?”

　　”Yes,” Lu Yang nodded hastily, “I think the person who called me had another purpose.”

　　”What do you mean?”

　　”That person actually not only provided me with the facts of that year, but he also sent me a complete article, the exact same one that I had posted on my account. He also made me agree to his condition, saying that if I didn’t post it that day, then he would just provide it to other accounts. I felt that since this case was already attracting attention and was a hot topic, I didn’t go to change the content and simply used the copy he had sent me…”

　　It was a valuable clue. Meng Zhao and Lu Shichen looked at each other. The person behind the scenes had actually prepared the manuscript in advance. The culprit was really well-prepared…

　　”How did he send you the article?” Meng Zhao turned his eyes to Lu Yang, “Through Email?”

　　”Um……”

　　”Do you have the email address?”

　　”Yes, it’s on my phone.” Lu Yang took out his phone from his pocket, pulled up the email app, and handed it to Meng Zhao.

　　Meng Zhao took it and glanced at it. It was a Gmail mailbox. If he guessed correctly, the source of the email was also overseas.

　　Meng Zhao forwarded the email to himself and returned the phone to Lu Yang: “Don’t delete it. I will ask my colleagues from the technology department to go to your house tomorrow to check the source of the email.”

　　”Okay,” Lu Yang nodded in agreement and added, “Officer Meng, I want to make up for my mistake this time.”

　　Meng Zhao didn’t take his words seriously and asked casually: “How do you want to make up for it?”

　　Lu Yang vowed: “I think there must be something more to the campus bullying case, and I want to find out the inside story.”

　　”Okay,” Meng Zhao dismissed him, “Don’t worry about this anymore. The investigation is the police’s business. Just don’t cause any more trouble.” He picked up the computer, closed the trunk, and turned to Lu Shichen and said, “Then I’ll go in first. You can go home.”

　　”How are you going back later?” Lu Shichen asked.

　　”I’ll take a taxi,” Meng Zhao raised his wrist and looked at his watch, “and probably the buses haven’t stopped at this hour.”

　　”I’ll not give up.”

　　Just as Meng Zhao was about to speak, Lu Yang raised his voice and said to Meng Zhao: “I will definitely find out the truth, Officer Meng. I majored in journalism, interned in a newspaper office, and also wrote investigative articles. I can definitely help…”

　　Seeing that Lu Yang refused to listen to him, Meng Zhao walked closer to him, looked at him with a sinking face and said, “I’m warning you, Lu Yang, don’t make your own decisions and stay away from this case.”

　　His eyebrows were slightly darker, and his stern expression was quite intimidating. Lu Yang did not dare to speak up for a while.

　　Meng Zhao looked at him for a few seconds before leaving.

　　After Meng Zhao had gone far and Lu Shichen got into the car, Lu Yang left angrily.

　　Lu Shichen watched as Meng Zhao walked up the steps in front of the Shanghai Municipal Bureau building and then walked into the lobby. He watched until the man’s figure was no longer visible, only then he withdrew his gaze.

　　He picked up his mobile phone from under the centre console, opened the call lounge, and dialled an overseas number.

　　The call was quickly answered by the other party: “Hello? You actually took the initiative to call me. Are you planning to return?”

　　”Not yet,” Lu Shichen said, “check a number for me.”

　　”As expected, you called me with a purpose. Okay, what’s the number? Send it to me. By the way, when will you come back? You won’t just stay in the country and never come back, right?”

　　”I’ll go back when the matter here is resolved.”

　　”Then resolve it quickly. The company’s high-level internal strife has escalated recently. It’s so tiring…”

　　The other party began to complain about some personnel disputes of the company. Lu Shichen looked at the passing vehicles outside the window and listened with little interest. A few minutes later, he saw Meng Zhao walking out of the building. He interrupted the other party: “I have something else to do, so I’ll hang up now.”

　　Meng Zhao originally thought that Lu Shichen had left, but when he exited the city bureau, he found that Lu Shichen’s car was still parked at the same place.

　　Lu Shichen’s behaviour was a little abnormal, and Meng Zhao felt that something was wrong. He seemed to be deliberately approaching him. Was it really just to find out the truth behind the case? It didn’t seem like that.

　　Meng Zhao approached Lu Shichen’s car, raised his fingers and knocked on the window.

　　The window then rolled down, revealing Lu Shichen’s profile.

　　At around eight o’clock in the evening, dim yellow street lights illuminated the entire street, and the tail lights of vehicles passing by on the road also threw some light. The smooth side of his face was half hidden in the dim light of the car and half illuminated by the street lights.

　　Meng Zhao leaned over the edge of the car window: “Are you really waiting here to take me home?”

　　”Get in the car.” Lu Shichen turned to look at him.

　　Meng Zhao stared into Lu Shichen’s eyes. He realised that Lu Shichen’s eyes seemed to be a shade lighter than ordinary people. Because of that, when Lu Shichen’s face was expressionless, his eyes looked particularly cold, making him look more like an exquisite dummy.

　　At the same time, Lu Shichen was also looking at him.

　　Meng Zhao was suddenly curious about how Lu Shichen would look when he lost control. It seemed that Lu Shichen had been wearing such a calm mask since high school, which was more than ten years ago.

　　But everyone always had feelings, and as long as they had feelings, there would always be a moment when they would lose control. ‘What would Lu Shichen’s face look like when he lost control? I really want to see it,’ Meng Zhao thought.

　　However, given Lu Shichen’s appearance, family background and career, Meng Zhao really couldn’t imagine the situation in which Lu Shichen would lose control.

　　After looking at each other for a while, Lu Shichen finally asked: “Why are you staring at me?”

　　”Weren’t you staring at me when we were at that barbecue restaurant?” Meng Zhao said, “What were you thinking about at that time?”

　　Lu Shichen withdrew his gaze first and turned his face forward: “Was there really such a thing?”

　　”Your level of carelessness is not much higher than that of ordinary people…” Meng Zhao laughed, walked around to the other side of the car, opened the door and got in.

　　As the car got back on the road, Meng Zhao thought about what had happened back then and felt that he should thank Lu Shichen.

　　”Um…” He put his fingers on the handle of the door and looked out the window, “For what happened back then, thank you.”

　　”Hmm?”

　　”My uncle’s case, and…that notebook.”

　　Lu Shichen said “Yeah” and nothing else.

　　He didn’t know if Lu Shichen still remembered what had happened back then, twelve years had passed since then.

　　The soft music in the car was not very plesant, and it was too quiet when the two of them were not speaking. Meng Zhao mentioned what happened back then without having anything to say: “By the way, do you remember your deskmate in high school? I saw him when I was working in the city hall, but I didn’t recognize him for a moment. What’s his name? Wei?”

　　”I don’t remember.” Lu Shichen didn’t seem to cooperate with him in recalling.

　　”You don’t even remember your deskmate’s name? Don’t you have a photographic memory? Then, who do you remember about those classmates from high school?”

　　”You.”

　　”Besides me?”

　　”No one.”

　　Meng Zhao was startled, then laughed and said, “Should I feel honoured?”

Chapter 25

　　The next morning, Zhang Chao from the Technical Investigation Department called Meng Zhao: “I’ve completed the repairs, but the erasing system of that Internet cafe was quite thorough. I tried my best, but I still couldn’t recover all the data.” Zhang Chao said on the phone, “Come and take a look first.”

　　After hanging up the phone, Meng Zhao went to the Technical Investigation Office and walked to Zhang Chao’s workstation.

　　The computer brought back from the Internet cafe had already been connected to the display. When Zhang Chao saw him coming in, he said, “Don’t have too much hope. I only managed to repair a two-second video.”

　　He clicked play, and the image appeared on the screen, and it was over almost in a flash. As Huang Mao had told, the picture quality was too blurry and the video had indeed been short from far. He could only clearly see a few teenagers in school uniforms standing on the roof of the building. The whole video was grey, so he could easily notice the person standing on the edge of the rooftop—Zhao Tong, wearing a red skirt, became the most conspicuous bright colour in the video.

　　”Can the sound be repaired?” Meng Zhao asked, staring at the picture.

　　”It’s fixed. As you had requested, we compared it with Zhou Yan’s voice during the live broadcast.” Zhang Chao handed Meng Zhao a pair of headphones.

　　Meng Zhao put on the headphones, and a young boy’s voice came from inside: “It’s so disgusting, why don’t you just die?”

　　Meng Zhao had watched some of Zhou Yan’s live broadcasts while investigating the case, and could easily confirm that the voice did belong to Zhou Yan.

　　He played the video a few more times, then took off the headphones and let them hang around his neck, and asked Zhang Chao: “What’s the comparison result?”

　　”99.99% similar.”

　　”Is it possible to synthetically obtain it?”

　　”It’s hard to say.” Zhang Chao turned sideways and opened up a comparative sonogram from another monitor. “The video file should have been compressed originally, and now the data is damaged. It’s hard to confirm whether it was synthesised.”

　　”It should be synthetic.” Meng Zhao looked at the identical sound wave comparison chart on the screen. “The voices of a seventeen-year-old and a twenty-seven-year-old cannot be exactly the same.” When he spoke, the example that appeared in his mind was actually of Lu Shichen. In the interrogation room that day, he had felt that Lu Shichen’s voice was deeper than it was in high school.

　　”Indeed,” Zhang Chao nodded in agreement and added, “By the way, I found another thing that should be useful to you.”

　　”What?”

　　Zhang Chao clicked on a picture on the desktop and enlarged it for Meng Zhao to see.

　　Meng Zhao was stunned for a moment. It was the scene after Zhao Tong committed suicide. Zhao Tong, wearing a red skirt, was lying in front of the chemical building with a large amount of blood spilling from the back of his head. The person standing in front of him was the young Zhou Yan. At that time, Zhou Yan still had a childish face and was looking up upstairs.

　　Compared with the newly restored video footage, the photograph was much clearer. No wonder Zhao Yunhua said that she had seen it with her own eyes that Zhou Yan was the murderer.

　　The photograph could not have been recorded by surveillance, rather it looked like it was captured using a camera. Meng Zhao fell into deep thought. What was the scene like when the photograph was taken?

　　He imagined that he was Zhou Yan, and a voice sounded from the top of the building: “Hey!”

　　When Zhou Yan heard the sound, he raised his head instinctively and looked towards the roof of the building. The man held the camera, taking a photograph of him and the dead Zhao Tong.

　　The person who had taken the photograph was most likely the real culprit who had forced Zhao Tong to commit suicide. That person was most likely the person who induced Zhao Yunhua to kill Zhou Yan…

　　Meng Zhao made up his mind: it was absolutely necessary to redo the investigation of the campus bullying incident from that year.